A Statistical Analysis of A Somewhat Subjective Rating of the Day’s Weather

Below is an analysis of the Capital Weather Gang’s “Daily Digit”, a number from 1 to 10 given each morning to the day’s expected weather. 574 days worth of Daily Digits were analyzed, from March 19, 2013 through October 13, 2014. The starting date was picked as that was the first date where it was easy to get a copy of the CWG’s archived web pages.

The mean daily digit was 6.32.

Below is a trend graph of the Daily Digit, smoothed slightly to make it more readable:

The slope upwards over time could be an artifact of the range of dates chosen, or it could be genuine Daily Digit Inflation.

Below is a histogram of the Daily Digit values:

There were only five days with a Daily Digit of 1; they were:

June 13, 2013 – David Streit (Severe weather)
December 9, 2013 – Jason Samenow (“Sloppy, cloudy and cold”)
December 29, 2013 – Brian Jackson (“40s and soaking rain in December”)
January 3, 2014 – A. Camden Walker (Icy from snow the night before)
January 28, 2014 – Matt Rogers (“Cruel cold slaps us in the face again”)

The mean Daily Digit per month of the year:

The mean Daily Digit per day of the week:

The mean Daily Digit per author:

There is a fairly regular rotation of authors, each generally writing on the same day, hence the strong correlation between the above two graphs. Each author had between 73 to 81 posts.

Not included in the above were the following two authors with a limited number of Daily Digits:
Kathryn Prociv: 10 entries with a mean of 8.3
Rick Grow: 8 entries with a mean of 5.0

There were also a few cases where two authors were credited the same day, also not included above:
Matt Rogers;Jason Samenow: 3 entries with a mean of 3.33
Brian Jackson;Dan Stillman: 2 entries: with a mean of 3.5
A. Camden Walker;Ian Livingston: 1 entry with a mean of 2 (January 10, 2014, Freezing Rain)
Dan Stillman;Ian Livingston: 1 entry with a mean of 4 (February 15, 2014, Snow)
Dan Stillman;Jason Samenow: 1 entry with a mean of 3 (February 26, 2014, “Mother Nature hits the repeat button with light morning snow”)

A big thanks to the Capital Weather Gang for their fabulous posts each day!

Update:

Here’s histograms for each author:







6 thoughts on “A Statistical Analysis of A Somewhat Subjective Rating of the Day’s Weather

  1. Wow Chris, this was a lot of fun to read, and probably took some time to put together, especially the research of going back to each day’s forecast. Thanks for sharing this!

    -Jim D (Xtrain21)

  2. I think the upward trend is due to the selected dates – remember that last summer (2014) was particularly cool and pleasant.

    Be interesting to see how it goes if you continue graphing. CWG guys seem to be mildists. 🙂

  3. Pingback: Is D.C.’s weather getting better? Stats and trends in the ‘Daily Digit’ - The Washington Post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


six × = 36